Cong, DMK back together for TN poll

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 13

After three years of separation, the Congress and the DMK today came together once again to contest the upcoming Tamil Nadu Assembly elections and keep the AIADMK and BJP under check.

The alliance, announced in Chennai after a meeting between senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad and DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi, had ended on March 20, 2013 amid a raging pro-Lankan Tamil sentiment in the state ahead of a crucial UN Human Rights Council vote against Sri Lanka.

The DMK, the second largest constituent of UPA-II at that time, quit the Government accusing the Congress of diluting the draft and going soft on Sri Lanka, accused of atrocities on Lankan Tamils. Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said, “There are pressures and compulsions in politics. We have in the past contested elections together and won… DMK is a very dependable partner.”

Not that the Congress had done well in the last state elections it fought in alliance with the DMK. The party had garnered just five seats of 234.

Back in Delhi, senior party leaders said Congress and the DMK were “natural allies in Tamil Nadu”, a sentiment Azad echoed when he said, “The priority right now is not seat adjustment or whether the Congress will join the Government if we win. The priority is that the DMK wins these elections and we are confident it will.”